Misfits

Our Review

The UK’s superpowered delinquents: five young offenders doing community service get struck by a freak electrical storm and come out with powers that match their deepest insecurities, the guilty time traveler, the shy mind reader, the girl whose touch kills, the ignored boy gone invisible, and Nathan, the motormouth whose power is the show’s best joke and arrives late.

Seasons 1-2 are the golden run: crude, clever, and surprisingly moving about the care system, class, and being young and disposable in Britain. Robert Sheehan’s Nathan is one of the great comedy drama performances of the era, a devoted slimeball whose one liners paper over real damage. The show’s rules (powers equal psychological scars) give it thematic discipline. The cast turnover after season 2 drains it by seasons 4-5, but the early seasons are essential genre subversion: what if powers didn’t make you special, just stranger?

Verdict: Watch seasons 1-2, wave at 3, skip 4-5. The punk rock X-Men.